School may have been out in July and August, but at the Centre for the Working Girl (CENIT) in Quito, Ecuador, there was a hive of activity.
Every year the centre organises popular summer camps for children of the local Camal market, providing educational and recreational activities for children who can only dream of going on a summer holiday.
One of the aims of the Centre for the Working Girl (CENIT) is to help working girls and their families break the cycle of poverty by equipping them with a means to financial independence.
“The centre places a special emphasis on helping girls and their mothers to acquire a valuable skill as a distressingly large proportion of the adult women in the girls’ families are subject to abuse and degradation because they have no money or means of their own to escape such a life,” explains CENIT’s director Hermana Jacqueline.
Oxford students who stripped off to raise money for their summer volunteering project at the Centre for the Working Girl (CENIT) in Ecuador have received a mention in The Times newspaper.
The enterprising students produced a nude calendar, featuring them posing in various locations in their day-to-day life at St Peter’s college.
The Centre for the Working Girl (CENIT) provides opportunities and hope for hundreds of Quito’s working children every year.
Sadly, however, there are many more children in and around Quito who are forced to work long hours and in dangerous conditions to supplement their minimal income.
Ecuadorians will soon be headed to the urns to vote in their new president – the eighth in ten years.
Elections in October will see one of nine current candidates take office in the new government.
The country has a rocky political past and present, and its people are famed for bringing down presidents by taking to the streets en masse.
In the same year that the Centre for the Working Girl (CENIT) celebrates its 15th anniversary, the centre’s medical clinic has reached the important milestone of half a decade of operation.
During the past five years the clinic has welcomed a grand total of 5,379 patients through its doors - a mixture of individuals attending CENIT programmes, their families and people from the local area who are in real need of medical attention.
The director of the Centre for the Working Girl (CENIT), Hermana Jacqueline, mentions Sonrisa in this brand new video presentation filmed in Quito. She explains how the centre works and expresses her gratitude to the overseas volunteers who come to CENIT every year.
Watch the film now:
The dramatic moments in which the Tungurahua volcano erupted on August 16 2006 were captured on video. See the footage here:
Sonrisa is UK registered charity no. 1102369